A ‘Racket Sports Set’ designed to be compatible with HTC Vive’s Tracker, the modular positionally-tracked puck that you can use to track practically anything in VR, has just made an appearance on the Vive accessories site. The Tracker has only been available for anyone claiming to be a developer since early this year, but the new accessory listing could be an indication of its upcoming commercial launch.
Thanks to augmented reality, the world is about to get weird. Real weird. Thankfully we’re not the only ones who think so, because Nexus Studios, the minds behind the inside-out VR tracking solution using ARKit, today launched HotStepper, an iOS wayfinding app that follows an infectiously strange little man that beckons you to follow him on the way to your destination.
On stage at Vive Developer Conference in Beijing, HTC today unveiled their upcoming standalone VR headset, Vive Focus. While HTC isn’t releasing a Daydream version of the headset in the West as previously announced, the company is using Vive Focus as the impetus for its own mobile VR platform that aims to resolve what HTC calls a “highly fragmented” mobile VR market in China, and become a common platform and storefront across disparate hardware vendors.
Stranded in space with just an AI voice and your broken ship for company, you must scavenge for materials to survive, searching random debris floating nearby using motion-based, zero-gravity locomotion. Needing some polish but highly playable in its current state, Star Shelter is available now on SteamVR Early Access with support for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
HTC revealed their new standalone Vive Focus headset today, poised to launch into the Asian market. Earlier this year the device was teased to be heading to Western markets as part of Google’s Daydream platform in 2017, but now HTC confirms they’ve canceled those plans.
Today during the Vive Developers Conference in Beijing, HTC revealed the Vive Focus, a standalone VR headset with inside-out positional tracking. The headset is positioned for the Chinese market.
The announcement that Steam will support the forthcoming Windows VR headsets was big news which means that owners will eventually have a strong library of VR content to draw from while Microsoft builds up its own library of VR games and apps on the Windows store. Some of VR’s best games however are exclusive to Oculus’ content library, though savvy Vive owners know that the unofficial ‘Revive’ workaround opens the door to playing Oculus games on the Vive, and the same could be true for the Windows VR headsets.
If FTL: Faster Than Light (2012) and the Borderlands franchise had a baby, the freakishly hard offspring would invariably be From Other Suns, a first-person shooter/spaceship management sim from Gunfire Games, the makers of Dead & Buried (2017), Chronos (2016) and Herobound: Spirit Champion (2016). Like its procedurally generated spiritual progenitor FTL, FOS will leave you gasping for breath at every turn, never sure if the two to three hours you spent fighting pirates, aliens, or zombies will amount to a win, or (more likely) a soul-crushing loss.
Supermassive Games has delayed two of its upcoming PSVR titles originally expected for Q4 releases, Bravo Team and The Inpatient. Both games are now set to launch in Q1 of 2018.
LG revealed its prototype VR headset using Valve’s Lighthouse positional tracking earlier this year, and while it isn’t certain what will become of the headset—or if it’ll be named “UltraGear” as a recent trademark filing suggests—it’s clear LG is thinking long and hard about the future of VR. A new patent, first reported by Dutch publication LetsGoDigital, shows a prospective LG headset sporting a unique spring-loaded grommet system that allows the headset to split in two.
Bethesda’s VR version of Skyrim (2011) is nearly here, launching on PSVR Friday this week. If you’re itching to see more gameplay before pulling the trigger on the full-priced game, Bethesda is running a live stream starting Monday, November 13th at 12:30pm ET (your time here) so you can get another peek at what’s poised to be an instant fan favorite.
Onward (2016), the popular VR FPS known for serving up its ‘no-frills’ squad-based action, is now in Early Access on the Oculus Store. The tactical mil-sim shooter, which aims to appeal to fans of traditional shooters like Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, or Counter-Strike, now features cross-play between both versions of the game—purchased through either Oculus or Steam.
In a study lead by Eisuke Fujinawa at the University of Tokyo, a team of students created a procedure for designing compact VR controllers that feel physically larger. Exploring the concept of ‘haptic shape illusion’, the controllers have data-driven, precise mass properties, aiming to simulate the same feeling in the hand as the larger objects on which they are based.
Titanfall developer Respawn Entertainment has announced plans to join EA, one of the world’s largest and most influential videogame publishers. The acquisition of Respawn, which will cost EA up to $455 million, won’t impact the studio’s recently announced VR title, says Oculus.
UK-based studio nDreams, the minds behind The Assembly (2016) and producer of Bloody Zombies (2017), and Near Light today announced that its upcoming tongue-in-cheek shooting game Shooty Fruity is slated to simultaneously launch on PlayStation VR, HTC Vive and Oculus Rift on December 19th, 2017.
